ProgBlog

Prague, AIPES, American Institute on Political and Economic Systems, The Fund for American Studies, TFAS

Tuesday, August 01, 2006

About AIPES

So it occurred to me that in all this time, I never really posted about AIPES or how I got involved in this awesome program.

AIPES stands for the American Institute on Political and Economic Studies. It is a program sponsored by The Fund for American Studies (or TFAS). Fourteen years ago, after the fall of Communism, these American guys decided it would be a great idea to establish an academic program in Central/Eastern Europe on capitalism and democracy. That's how AIPES was born. The program started with two professors from Georgetown University. The politics professor, Jim Lengle, is still teaching in the program. But the economics professor has been rotating. Mike Veseth, the International Political Economy department director at the University of Puget Sound, taught the economics component last year. Mike invited me last fall to come to Prague as a teaching assistant, so that's basically how I got involved.

The Fund has programs all over the world: Hong Kong, Greece, D.C., etc. The Greece program is about conflict resolution, so it's mostly for students from the Middle East. About 10 students or so in this year's Greece program are Lebanese... and they just happened to leave Lebanon shortly before the airport was blown up. These students have no way of going home! So now TFAS is working on trying to find places for the students to study in the States (if they want to) so they don't fall behind in their coursework. So sad!

Here are some links about TFAS and AIPES.

1 Comments:

At 4:07 PM, Blogger Sue & Mike said...

Wendy! I had no idea that you were keeping a bog in Prague!
Mike

 

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